Highlights

Is M ∆ R G ∆ E U X’s new c10 on Big Ear Tapes the soundtrack to a demented midnight movie? Maybe just a short? If so, where the hell’s the screen? Ripped up? Shredded? Scorched? All together gone?

Contradictions and distractions, I suppose. ¥ U ® T _>_ F E. D O ® ∆ reminds me of a damaged film score, obviously, with its digitally-aged scuffs, gnarled tones, and skipping audio; and yeah, all of those descriptions are fine and nice, but it’s so much more than that pithy alignment of words. Just listen to the pleasant paint drops dripping from the stream. See the dying fields and failing crops. Feel the kink in your neck from starring at passing light poles. Can you serve squares? Squalor? This stationary is outdated and full of holes, but fill it full, please. Absorb and be absorbed. Conceal the audio data within your spine and mind; let it congeal. View with extremity. Hear absolutely. And, if you like, purchase one of the five copies of the cassette here.

NYC producer Maxo chops up “Love Is On The Way” from NYC band Kuroma (which features members of MGMT) into something that could either fit on a label as jittery as PC Music or as smooth as Ryan Hemworth’s Secret Songs (Maxo has had releases on both). This ability to be both bright and almost melancholy seems a fit for Kuroma’s own high pitched emotionality. This track uses almost no held out notes, no landscapes, only hyper-minute blips, yet there’s a feeling of length and duration that’s hard to acheive if you’re choosing the smallest building blocks to use. Maxo achieves in making something that could feel piecemealy actually feel complete. Perhaps this is why it’s a ninjamix: it’s swift, fast, you don’t even know it’s there, but it definitely leaves a mark. Kuroma’s new album Kuromarama drops April 7 via Votiv Music!

Person Pitch is legendary; even recently, on the last warm days of 2014, I had a near-ecstatic experience putting on headphones and listening to it while walking around a park near my house. Tomboy doesn’t get as much play around my house, but it’s still pretty solid. Given Panda Bear’s positive relationship with my ears and deep importance to my Person Pitch-era self, one would think that I’d have at least given his newest, PBVSGR, a listen. But, in part due to all those YouTube ads telling me to listen to it, I’ve deliberately avoided the album since.

So when I first heard Andy Stott’s remix, released recently on SoundCloud, I thought “Whoa, Panda Bear’s new stuff is way harsher than it used to be,” as I’d mistakenly assumed that the remix more or less resembled the source material. This is decidedly not the case here, and Panda Bear superfans might be a bit disappointed at just how little the remix resembles “Boys Latin.” The only thing linking it to Panda Bear in any recognizable way is a short snippet of PB vocals just after the two-minute mark, which could have just as easily been left out, after which Stott jumps promptly back into the complex trap-industrial beat that makes up the bulk of the track’s six minutes.

Those looking for elaborations on the intricate melodies for which Panda Bear is renowned will find their mellows unceremoniously harshed within the opening seconds of this remix. The track is completely beat-driven, melody of any sort conspicuously AWOL. Luckily, that beat is more than capable of keeping our attention throughout the track, always moving just a bit too quickly to ever be pinned down, leaving more tracers than concrete images. Blown-out bass and trashcan-lid percussion stand in for the agreeable samples AnCo fans might expect, rattles and hisses that at times resemble spray paint cans writing “fuk brian wilson” on the wall of Noah Lennox’s house. Stott even denies the listener a kick drum, which might keep everything in orbit; you’re on your own in his Magic Theater, which ought to carry with it the same warning as the the one in Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf: FOR MADMEN ONLY.

Panda Bear is also embarking as of tomorrow on an international tour, and is probably the only artist in the world whose upcoming tour dates include both Berghain and Coachella. Scope those dates in full (and more tracks, duh) at the track’s soundcloud page.

Personally, I trust music that doesn’t beat around the bush. Sure we just awarded John Wiese the honorable Eureka status here on Tiny Mix Tapes, but when I was about four minutes deep into the first track of Deviate From Balance, my thoughts were, “This track entitled, ‘Just Warming Up?’” (joke stolen for Choco golden vet Sammy D-Bling, propz). LIDS gets RIGHT INTO the muck with “Blank Flag.” And sure the track sounds like other musicians and it’s nothing progressive, but my mind cannot stop moving to this track, and it’s also so familiar to stuff I love on Not Not Fun that it’s too undeniable for me to dislike.

Immediately, the beat intros against vocals echoing out, so unitimidating until the beat tunnels into your cleft mind’s vision that it peels away layers so subtly building that not until the singer shouts out, you don’t realize you’re in the thick of “Blank Flag.” And I suppose the title insinuates surrender, right? Considering there is nothing adorning LIDS’ flag. But the rhythm relentlessly sears into the listeners third-eye like a brand drawn from the embers that feels like an icy-hot patch against the deepest recesses of the brain.

Running at a pace of distance through wet streets dripping with grime off building corners and street signs, awaiting for the next car horn to blare, and lights from around the corner blind your path. Quickly turning down the alley becomes another exit, or not, as climbing the nearest jutting brick wall turns doom into a new strategy, hearing feint *POPS* after tires squeal to a stop and doors are slammed. On the roof, a deafening ring pierces the ear drums, and looking for a way down only exists on another roof, which is a leap, a hang, a struggle to pull up fast as the whizzing of bullets whirl past and pock-mark the wall. But evasion lingers in the shadow of the trail left behind, and soaking in the streetlight ensnares your body in warmth.

sachi just dismantlement your world with “$$$uperjaMMMMM.” No, you don’t owe money. Yes, your psyche is still intact. But for 21 minutes and 20 seconds, you’re in pure atmospheric bliss. Your element is your own. Time becomes liquid. Enjoy: